I came home yesterday from the Golden Key Asia-Pacific conference in Canberra to find Melbourne broken. Train lines were down – apparently it had reached 47 degrees! And now this morning, there is news of bushfires that have possibly killed more people than Ash Wednesday fires…I saw some bushfires from the plane as I was flying home. It was a fairly awesome yet scary sight…what a tragedy…
At any rate, I’m supposed to be blogging about the conference.
The Asia-Pacific region of Golden Key includes Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia – and all three were represented at the conference! It was held at The Australian National University from Thursday to Saturday and it was great, even with Canberra’s hot weather (although I suspect that Melbourne suffered more).
This year’s theme was “Focused on the Future” and unlike the Young ICT conference back in May, there were usually break out rooms where we had to choose which speaker to see. What a hard choice! This conference had some very impressive guests – Ross Garnaut, Anh Do, Ian Thorpe, Major-General Michael Jeffrey – luckily the sessions with these guests were for everyone.
Anh Do is an amazing speaker -I had never realised before that he had such a great story to tell. Ian Thorpe was interesting to hear from, given that we had raised funds for his foundation throughout the year – in fact Swinburne raised more money than any other chapter in the Asia-Pacific region! Ross Garnaut was very topical and personally very interesting while Major-General Jeffrey had some great points to make on community and volunteerism.
A number of other panels were held with topics ranging from how to run a chapter (kudos to the Monash chapter for two great presentations) to entrepreneurialism to women in the workplace. There were also a number of social and community service events – it was great to visit the Australian War Memorial again for the first time since 1994.
I met plenty of other chapter members and a few extra guests. Swinburne was quite well represented with myself and two other Executive committee members, but also two other general members and an extra guest. Six Swinburne representatives! I’m quite proud, heh.
This conference was a lot of fun with plenty of opportunities to learn and network. I’m already looking forward to next year’s Asia-Pacific conference and now I’m seriously considering attending the International Conference in Florida in July! Hopefully we can get a great Swinburne representation there too!
So I’m starting RADIO TOKYO at Swinburne! I plan to do a weekly 90 minute show featuring Japanese music. Japan has the second biggest music industry in the world but there is little Japanese music on the airwaves in Australia. Obviously language is a concern, but I’ve found that music is equally enjoyable even if the lyrics can’t be understood. Besides, quite a lot of Japanese artists will sing at least partially in English.